Radovan Karadzic’s Ex-Adviser Appeals Against Conviction

Jovan Tintor, a former adviser to Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, appealed against his conviction for the unlawful detentions and abuse of Bosniak and Croat prisoners in the Vogosca area in 1992.

The defence lawyer for Jovan Tintor, the former president of the wartime Crisis Committee in the municipality of Vogosca, lodged an appeal at the Bosnian state court on Friday against his 11-year prison sentence.

Tintor, who was also wartime Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic’s adviser and the head of Karadzic’s Serb Democratic Party in Vogosca, was found guilty last August on seven counts of having participated in a widespread and systematic attack on the non-Serb population in Vogosca from April 1992 to the end of July that year.

“I consider that the court sentenced me as a completely innocent person… I neither knew about nor ordered any criminal act,” Tintor told the court on Friday.

His lawyer Nina Kisic said that a large part of the appeal concerns what she described as numerous contradictions in the first-instance verdict.

She said that the verdict was flawed and “not explained with due diligence”, citing as an example the fact that it attributed certain words to someone who not only had not testified at the trial at all, but had actually died 20 years ago.

Last August’s verdict convicted Tintor of responsibility for unlawful detentions, torture, beatings and making people do forced labour. It said the crimes were committed against a large number of Bosniak and Croat prisoners in several detention camps in Vogosca.

The judge in the trial that Tintor had knowledge of the plans to detain Bosniaks in Vogosca, and had described the territory as “Serb land”.

The verdict also said that Tintor set up the Bunker prison camp and had authority to decide who would be detained.

He was also responsible for the detention of prisoners in the Nakina Garage and Planjina Kuca detention facilities, and for the inhumane conditions there, the verdict found.

However he was acquitted on one count of the killings of 13 prisoners who were taken from the Bunker camp, and never seen again.